Inside knowledge alone won’t stop Brady
FOXBORO — Devin McCourty might know all of Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski’s moves and tricks inside and out, having defended them for years in practice, but that doesn’t guarantee success in the defensive captain’s mind.
The Patriots defense still has to play its best to have a chance against Brady, Gronk and the Buccaneers as a whole during Sunday night’s showdown.
“This is one of those weeks where we can’t have a bunch of my bads,” McCourty told reporters during his Wednesday presser. “We gotta be on it . . . it’s really going to come down to competing each play.”
McCourty said if the game was as simple as knowing an opponent, Brady wouldn’t be in the league for 20-plus seasons, touting seven Super Bowl wins.
Brady also knows how McCourty thinks, and how the Patriots defense likes to play, and their tendencies with pocket passers.
“I remember first getting in the league, and the hardest matchups you talked about was playing against Tom, playing against Peyton, and then there was Aaron Rodgers, there were so many of those guys. That’s what we have this week,” said McCourty. “We’re going against a guy that knows what you’re in, knows what you’re trying to do, he’s reading every man on the field, he’s seen it all, and I would say he’s seen this more than anything because of his years in the system, going against the defense in training camp and OTAs.
“So, it’s going to be a guy that knows a lot of what we do, so what we do, we have to do a good job. We have to play our best football,” he went on. “That’s what happens when you play against the great quarterbacks, the great teams, and I would say this team, as much talk will be about Tom and Gronk coming back, they’re really good at a lot of positions.”
Gronkowski did not practice Wednesday. He suffered a rib injury in Sunday’s loss to the L.A. Rams. He returned to play in the game, but the Bucs are likely being careful with their star tight end.
McCourty’s memories aren’t exactly fond, having had to defend Gronkowski in practice. And he sees that the tight end is back in top form and more Gronk-like after a brief hiatus in retirement.
“He can do everything. We got to see that first-hand in practice every day,” McCourty said of Gronkowski, who already has 16 catches for 184 yards, with four touchdowns after three games. “He’s an incredible challenge as soon as we get inside the 20-yardline, no matter where he lines up, I think you’ve seen the amount of touchdowns he’s caught in his career with how tough he is in the red area, catch radius, great hands.
“The same problems he gave us at practice, he’ll give us Sunday night. We got to have an awareness of where he’s at. We know what he can do, how he can hurt us, all throughout the game … he’s definitely one of the guys you come into the game, like, we gotta have awareness, we gotta stop him … we gotta know how the defense is called to try and be around him and slow him down.”
McCourty said how the defense fares against Brady and Tampa Bay’s elite offense will also provide a bit of a measuring stick, and allow them to hopefully fix some of the issues they’ve been having collectively as a defense.
“It’s a great time to get those things going against a team like this because it’ll give us confidence going forward,” he said, “and it’ll show that we can do it, but we better do it Sunday night, because we have to.”